Jerry Hayes

Just as I thought that the Daily Telegraph could sink no lower they splash a dodgy sting about cash for access. Now put out of your minds whether you think that MPs should have no outside interests and ignore what you might think of the policies of Jack Straw and Malcolm Rifkind when they were Foreign Secretary. There is only one simple question. ‘What have they done which is in breach of the Parliamentary rules’. The simple answer is nothing. If the allegation was that for a few bob a cup of camomile with Miliband could be provided, an Aga supper with the Camerons or a raucous night of lager and lighting farts with Philip Hammond, then they could clearly in breach of the rules. And the purple prose of former standards watchdog, Sir Alastair Graham, are bordering on the the comical. ‘Shocking’ and that it was against the rules to negotiate a business deal in a Commons office. Would the Strangers bar or the Pugin room be all right then? Or what about a slap up lunch at the Savoy. Completely daft.

And how are former cabinet ministers meant to earn a crust? Again, provided they are not offering access to Ministers for cash, there is absolutely nothing wrong with advising businesses with their areas of expertise. Some may say that an MP should have no outside interests at all. But that is a separate argument.

So now there will be a spring in the steps of the KIPPERS. MPs are out of touch, the Westminster elite and part of the bubble. Wrong and quite an appalling accusation.

If there was a Tea Room discussion about which MPs were greedy and dodgy, Straw and Rifkind would not have even been contemplated lest of all mentioned. They are both conscientious representatives and thoroughly decent public servants. To be pilloried as they have been to sell a few papers and boost some television ratings is beneath contempt. I don’t think Jack should have voluntarily resigned from the Parliamentary Labour Party and I hope that the Intelligence Committee will give Malcolm a resounding vote of confidence. One wonders after the events of the last few days whether Boris should consider taking his excellent column elsewhere. The Mail would snap him up. And the money……….

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What on earth did senior management of the Telegraph think that they were doing running that appalling story on their front page this morning? You know the one about suicides at the TIMES because of the pressures put on them by Murdoch management to cosy up to advertisers. And the suggestion that most of Fleet Street is up to the same sort of naughties as Peter Oborne accused the Telegraph of when he had his Geoffrey Howe moment. In a nutshell the Oborne argument is that as HSBC had a massive advertising budget with them and that the bank had loaned a subsidiary company £240 million, the editorial policy was to bury the HSBC dodgy Swiss tax avoidance scheme allegations. The Telegraph deny this.

But the very fact that the Telegraph is pointing the finger at everyone else down the Street of shame may be a ruthless but clever device of closing this story down. I would imagine that management consulted Andrew Neil the Chairman of Press Holdings who own the Telegraph and the Spectator. I have know Andrew for years. A brilliant journalist and a legendary editor of the Sunday Times. And a serious bruiser. Enter a revolving door in front of Andrew and I can guarantee that he will come out first.

If Andrew was consulted I suspect that he would have drawn on his experience at the hands of Murdoch in 1994. The Sunday Times was running a corruption piece on then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamed. He was not amused and directly contacted Murdoch who feared that the story would damage his fledgling extra terrestrial television interests in Asia. Neill got the heave ho and a whacking great cheque. After all, he was right to run the story.

So my theory is that this is a warning to the rest of Fleet Street to take their tanks of the Telegraph’s beautifully manicured lawn or else. It will be interesting to see what the reaction of the Sundays will be on this. A bit of a headache for columnists who (although they will never admit) want to know what the line is. My guess that this story will be closed down mid week if not before.

My advice to politicians? Apart from the usual platitudes, leave it alone it will only come back to bite you on the bum.

So what do we learn from all of this? That newspapers are as cynical and venal as politicians. There is a satisfying whiff of hypocrisy in the air. The papers attack politicians for being too cosy with the money men. Whoops. Oh, and the Guardian, that great scourge of tax avoidance, has got half a billion quid in a tax haven in the Cayman’s.

Thank heavens we have a free, fearless and independent press who will leave no stone unturned to root out corruption.

I have been reading with the sick fascination that some people have from rubber necking a car crash the utterings of ‘Top Barrister’ David Osborne. His views on rape are simply just that; views. They are not the law. A woman (or a man ) not only has to consent but be in a fit state to be able to do so. The law is very, very clear that consent is about choice. And you have to be in a fit state to be able to choose. So threats of violence, the use of drugs, the use of fraud or being unconscious negatives consent. But it is a matter of fact for the jury and nobody else. A defendant has the defence of arguing that he reasonably believed that the complainant was consenting. Again, it is solely a matter for the jury. It is old law and good law. It is common sense. What really amazes me is that for me to prosecute a serious sexual offence I have to have had the training and experience to do so. So does the judge, but not the defence counsel. This really ought to be rectified.

The difficulties for juries arise in the so called grey areas. Where a complainant claims that they were too drunk to consent and the defendant says that this is a lie. Unless there is supporting evidence, who do you believe? I recently prosecuted a man for a particularly unpleasant rape in a public place. It was witnessed by a passer by and the back count of alcohol in her blood supported the eye witness that she was like a sack of potatoes; completely out of it. The defendant was rightly disbelieved. But it is rarely so straight forward.

Where the public (and sadly David Osborne) gets muddled is when a man and a woman have both been drinking a lot and they both end up having sex. Then the woman cries rape. To suggest that a man has a perfect defence because of the drink is dangerous nonsense. It is for the jury alone to decide on the evidence. The simple question is ‘was she able to choose, did he reasonably believe that she consented’. As a matter of common sense men should be very careful about having sex with somebody who has had a lot to drink. In the cold light of day it is one hell of a risk.

But back to Mr.Osborne. I am not the most politically correct of men, but even I was shocked at the language used. A blog about such a highly emotive and sensitive subject such as rape should not be headed ‘gagging for it……storm in D cup’. Particularly if the piece is written by a barrister. And his comments as reported by the press about women showing their bums and having their tits out whilst legless are views straight out of the Stone Age . But have a look at his preceding blog. Here the great man wants to abolish jury trial as they have riff raff, gormless teenagers and women serving on them. All amazingly cranky Dog and Duck sentiments. So he has form. Perhaps they should give him an OSBO.

I think it’s time that dear old Mr.Osborne hangs up his wig and retires to Dunrobing or become a UKIP parliamentary candidate. He’d fit in rather well. Oh, and there are two David Osbornes at the Bar. The other is rather good news and has not had a happy weekend.

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I didn’t sleep very well last night, so rather than count sheep I decided that it would be more soporific to count members of the Shadow Cabinet. Sadly, it kept me awake as I found it very difficult to name most of them, let alone what on earth their policies were.

The two Eds were easy. The first hopeless and the other a bully. Both are deficit deniers, both are wedded to an unworkable and unpopular mansion tax. And their latest wheeze is to tax the wicked hedge funds. The trouble with this bit of uncosted populism is that according to the Centre For Policy Studies this will be a tax on savings and pensions. So like their old boss and mentor, Gordon Brown, those on private pensions will be clobbered again by a Labour government.

Andy Burnham at health was a bit of a doddle. He’s in denial about the role he and Labour played in sensibly encouraging private providers. As distinguished economist and Labour peer Lord Desai remarked the other day, as long as the NHS is free at the point of delivery and there is quality and value for money, it really doesn’t matter who provides the services. Poor old Andy, the former Andrex puppy has tried to transform himself into a Rottweiler, but ends up looking like a UNITE poodle. We will all fondly remember his car crash on Newsnight when he could not explain why the only part of the NHS that is run by Labour, Wales, is a total shambles.

Tristran Hunt at education then came to mind. A really nice guy but seems in an eternal state of amiable bemusement. Is he for or against Free Schools? I haven’t fathomed this. And neither has he.

Then there is Chuka Umunna at business. Sleek, oiled, dangerously handsome and straight out of a GQ fashion plate. The sort of chap who can’t pass a mirror or any reflected surface without having a self satisfied peek. And you can smell the ambition at fifty feet. He probably farts Armani. The trouble is that his role is to reassure business that Labour is their friend. At that he has spectacularly failed. In the last few day the captains of industry have warned that Labour policies would would be a disaster with the probability that companies would flee the country.

Lastly, I remembered Yvette Cooper who has the incredible capability in debate of running the full gamut of her emotions from A to B. She is regularly touted as a candidate for the leadership. To me that is one of life’s many mysteries.

And that’s about it. I haven’t a clue who is at Defence, DEFRA, Communities, DCMS. I know Rachel Reeves does something, but I’m not sure what. She is always on the telly though.

So why in election year are the majority of the Shadow Cabinet invisible? Incompetence? Lack of motivation? That horrible dread feeling that they are going to be trashed at the election? Heaven knows, maybe all three.

The Scottish polls must have had a chilling effect. Poor Jim Murphy, a rather decent sort, is a committed Blairite who is trying to pretend to be more socialist than the SNP which is a very tall order. I hadn’t realised until the devolution debates that Scottish Labour, unlike their English counterparts, want to scrap Trident. Barmy. What a mess.

Now ‘Tory collaborators’ (thanks Prezza), wicked right wingers such as Milburn, Hutton and Mandelson are just trying to remind Ed, that Blair, governing from a tad left of centre, must have been doing something right as he is the most successful election leader Labour has ever had. The big tent has turned into a rather isolated tepee where the peace pipe is nowhere to be found.

Then this morning dear old Danny Alexander came up with a great wheeze to try and capture the youth vote, end universal benefits for pensioners. Bonkers. Piss off the pensioners at your peril. They vote in droves whereas by and large, the young can’t be arsed.

The Labour manifesto will make the 1983 ‘suicide note’ seem like a middle of the road stroll in the park.

If we were not a few weeks away from an election Chris Grayling would have been ventilated from office. The man is incompetent and a disgrace. I have bored you enough about how he is dismantling our system of justice, destroying the independent bar and plans to close down the family solicitor and replace them with G4s, (under investigation), SERCO (under investigation) and Co-op law ( say it with Flowers). His department has been judicially reviewed so many times and spend so much time in the High Court that it is amazing that they haven’t put in a right to buy. It is not surprising that he wants to limit it.

Just a quick word for the uninitiated. We are governed by statutory instruments which usually go through on the nod, or late on a Thursday night in the Commons when nobody can be arsed to be there. They affect all of our lives as they determine how government departments are able to operate. In other words, within the law. So if your kid has been deprived of a school place, or some dreadful development has suddenly appeared out of nowhere and the government hasn’t obeyed the rules laid down by Parliament you can toddle of the the High Court and try and persuade a senior judge that you are not being vexatious or frivolous. And it is a rigorous sifting process. We call it the rule of law.

But according to Grayling all this is the wicked work of smelly socked swampy types. Bloody lefties. The rule of law, like freedom is so precious that it has to be rationed. Grayling puts the dick into tat.

So when you have such lefties as former Lord Chief Justices, former Tory Cabinet ministers defeating his Putinesque bill in the Lords as they have ‘a chilling effect on British justice’ and you have Law Lords like Lord Panick warning that ‘The Lord Chancellor’s remarks on judicial review demeans the office’ it really is time to be deeply concerned.

But there is really something Gothically comic about the the Grayling mind set. He set up dear old Lord Faulks (an opponent of the Grayling legal carnage before he took up office) to come up with a killer argument in the debate. That judicial review had to be curtailed as the development of a supermarket had been delayed by six months! My God these bloody lefty fat cat lawyers are really taking the Lidl. Grayling really is off his trolley after all.

Somehow I think that not enough government time will be found to reverse this welcome Lords defeat. But after the election when Cameron returns to Downing Street Grayling is a shit which will have to be flushed.

An eerie silence has descended upon Westminster. Eyes that are normally popping out on stalks have ceased to swivel. Ruddy faces usually contorted in rage have become more like beacons of serenity. And the green portcullised carpets have been spared the usual foam specked gnashing of Tory teeth. The loonies have returned to their wards. Of course they still loathe Cameron. But he is beginning to look like a winner. And nobody wants to be seen to rock the boat. Well, not just yet.

This has been a terrible couple of weeks for all the other parties. Labour’s mansion tax has been ripping them apart. When Diane Abbott joins forces with the Prince of Darkness whom she would not piss on if he was on fire, Miliband is in serious trouble. Unemployment is plummeting, with more jobs being created in the UK than the whole of the EU. Well, in England anyway. In the Labour fiefdom of Wales unemployment has risen by 9000 and in SNP controlled Scotland by 7000. With inflation the lowest in 50 years and energy prices falling without statutory intervention, wages are beginning to catch up. By the time of the election the cost of living peg on which what passes of Labour’s economic policy hangs would have fallen off the wall. Couple this with the gushing praise for Cameron by Obama and Osborne’s economic successes lauded by by the IMF and there are the beginnings of a hope that Cameron could achieve a working majority. But there is always the unexpected unexpected. The Eurozone is still in critical care. I foresee no chance of economic stability in the near future. And they are our largest market.

Then there there was the remarkable double whammy from the Bank of England. Inflation could be zero by April and there will be no interest rises for a long while to come.

It has been an appalling week for UKIP. Many of us predicted that the cerebral and rather decent Douglas Carswell would tire of the crazy antics of Farage and be shocked atthe the soft and repellent rump of unpleasantness that has become the hallmark of the KIPPERS. Farage has lost his chief policy maker, has cocked up on the NHS, and has had his ‘foreigners are nicking our jobs’ fox shot and buried under a couple of tons of concrete. There are 700,000 job vacancies. Worse, the Greens, who really are a bunch of crackpots, are taking votes from Labour and UKIP.

But this is going to a vile and dishonest election. Nick Robinson is not a liar. And if he says that Miliband told him that he plans to weaponise the NHS, something that he has not denied, then it was said. It will haunt him. But Andy Burnham’s tactics are an utter disgrace. To accuse the Tories of privatisation of the NHS at the expense of patients is a lie. He signed off the Circle deal. He was in charge when the horrors of Mid Staffs was occurring. And he damn well knows that his government would be spending precisely the same amount as the Coalition. To frighten the elderly and vulnerable to grub a few votes is despicable. He is going to have a tough election, particularly if the MAIL story that Labour supporters sabotaged Circle is proved. Tonight’s party political broadcast borders upon the wicked. There is only one party leader who does not believe that health should be free at the point of delivery and that is Farage. What a dreadful little man.

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There is a justified sense of horror and outrage in the civilised world at the Charlie Hebdo massacre. The real question is why are we at all surprised? In our cosy, reasonably well fed Western European comfort blanket satire and the freedom to cause offence is deeply embedded in our culture. It never has never existed anywhere in the Middle East with the exception of Israel.

Fundamentalists of all religions tend to be a humourless bunch. There are some pretty dreadful and barbaric punishments in Leviticus. Stoning to death children who disobey their parents, women who are menstruating near a temple and homosexuals, to name a few from quite a long and vaguely ridiculous list of capital crimes. And the Koran has plenty of smiting, smoting, and beheading for an equally ridiculous list. But the overwhelming majority of believers appreciate that these reflect a barbaric time and consign them to the eccentricities of history. Of course, those who want to promote their own warped causes cherry pick the bloodthirsty parts and turn them into some sick badge of honour. Like the American pastor who recently came to to the conclusion that God had the solution to AIDS; just kill off the gays. He quoted Leviticus.

The Muslim world is really going to have to get to grips with what happened in Paris and speak with one clear voice. It is not good enough to condemn and then add, ‘but the Prophet is more beloved to believers than parents or children, to insult him could lead to consequences’. In other words although we don’t condone this sort of behaviour don’t be too surprised if the nutters take the law into their own hands. The subtext being feel free to satirise anything but our religion. It should go without saying that this is contrary to everything that we hold dear. Dictators, demagogues and those who manically believe in a cause have one thing in common; they don’t like the piss being taken out of them. In Western Democracies satire is our escape valve and in rock and roll language ‘sticking it to the man’ is a helpful way of exposing pomposity and corruption. So how do we react to what happened in Paris?

There is the embryo of a thesis by some commentators that our newspapers have been engaged in collective cowardice. That they haven’t taken head on the fundamentalists. That they are afraid of causing offence. And there was some criticism that Private Eye didn’t reprint the Danish cartoons that caused such uproar. I don’t buy this for one moment. There has always been a degree of self censorship by the British Press regarding causing gratuitous offence to people’s religious beliefs, but never self censorship of the fight against Islamic extremism. Already the Internet is teeming with satire and I suspect that the next few days so will the main stream press. It’s risky but its the price we must pay for democracy and freedom of speech.

But I feel desperately sorry for the overwhelming majority of law abiding Muslims through Europe. There is a dangerous awakening of deeply unpleasant and right wing sentiments emerging in many EU countries. Paris plays into their dangerous hands. In Britain we must do everything we can to support and protect our Muslim communities. But we must stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight against extremism. There can be no equivocation.

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Just as I had thought that John Witherow had unbuckled the final strap of Tim Montgomerie’s canvas jacket and administered the final dose of Maggadone (a fairly painless method of weaning people off of a deadly addiction to Thatcherism), his latest piece in the Thunderer made me realise that he still needs help. And sadly, in this age of austerity, there have been cuts to the Gove Programme of Enlightened Re-education. So it’s going to be a tough Christmas for Monty. The counselling may not be there for him. It could be cold turkey.

And the piece in question? ’Don’t vote for David Cameron at the next election’. You, of course, may vote for him in Witney, but only with fingers crossed and a garland of garlic. Well, thank heavens for that. ‘You might think that your’e voting for a Cameron government, but the Tories may change leader within days of the election and almost certainly within two years. Mr. Cameron may choose to quit himself in 2017, assuming that he is still prime minister. By then he’ll have been Tory leader for a gruelling 12 years. It’s just as likely that he will be forced out earlier. As recent days have shown, the Cameroons are at war with once loyal colleagues such as Theresa May.’

Oh, how Monty’s old bosses such as IDS and O’Patz will be creaming in their jeans! No doubt he will argue that all he is doing is trying to persuade all Cameron haters and swivel eyed Euro carpet biters that they don’t have to fall into the poisonous embrace of the Faragistas. Vote Tory and you can nail that pinko, husky hugging anti-marriager for once and for all.

But this analysis is a fantasy worthy of Kim Wrong Un. Cameron is going to fight for a fair deal from Brussels and he expects Hammond to deliver it for him. And the portents are not at all bad.

And I am certain that Theresa May will be positively glacial as being given a name check as ‘once loyal’. To say that the two camps are at war with each other is fanciful silly season gossip. May is a formidable, successful and valued Home Secretary. There is not a snowball’s chance in hell that Cameron wants her out of the way. Like David Young she does not bring him problems, only solutions. She is an asset and a vote winner. Day by day she shoots a KIPPER fox and like a gamekeeper hangs them outside the Home Office.

The problem the Tories have at the moment is entourage creep. Some little boys at No 10 are furious that she is getting such rave reviews and some of the little boys at the Home Office are not helping her cause with silly briefings. I would imagine that Cameron is irritated by the scribblers who are looking for splits, plots and bids. And so he should be. Labour is in disarray, they have no credible economic policy, Milband is a joke and Balls a thug in denial. Even better, the KIPPERS are being found out for what they really are and Farage is in a hole at the controls of a JCB digger.

Perhaps that is what is worrying the right. There is a real possibility that Cameron will win with a working majority. The horror of it all! And now the mantra is that it is all George Osborne’s doing. Bonkers. If Cameron is stuffed so is he.

If there are any manoeuvres going on at the Home Office I would be amazed if May doesn’t put the kibosh on them. She would be foolish not to.The last thing that she wants is to be blamed for division. She was party chairman and knows that the voters and the grass roots despise it.

Now a radical thought. Why don’t the entourages bugger off for Christmas and maintain a vow of silence? Perhaps indulge in a New Years resolution only to brief the press about unity and successful policies. If not there should be sackings on all sides. An election victory is becoming more possible each day. It would be bordering on the criminal to sabotage it.

And as for Monty? I am sure that intensive counselling can be made available. In the festive spirit I will send him a bottle of Maggadone myself.

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Now I appreciate that this will really piss some people off, but Baroness Jenkin was right. Some of the poor do not know how to cook. This is an historical problem. My folks and their folks were brought up in the East End of London. Looking back it would seem an horrific childhood. In my mum’s case it was seven to a bed with a father who was a boxer who practiced on her mother. In 1905 she had the courage to divorce him which in those days was courageous. But they all stuck together. And before the days of welfare putting food on the table was a problem. Mothers knew every wrinkle. On a Saturday evening my mum would go to the bakers and get a bag of stale biscuits for a penny. They scoured the markets and got good deals. They ate. Not like princes but well enough to share a meal with one child from the orphanage every Sunday.

The art of making the best of what you could obtain has always been the way the poor have eaten. Go to Italy and France and realise that was is now haute cuisine was basically how the poor ate. Pomme Boulangere is just potatoes and onions shoved in a baker’s oven when it was cooling down after the last bake of the day.

The trouble is that in this country families have been fragmented. Often single mothers are products of other single mothers. The handed down art of cooking nutritiously and cheaply has been mostly lost. In the days of terraced housing mums would be just a few doors down and would always be about help out in cooking and looking after the kids. Society has changed.

Years ago I used to appear on KILROY and other television shows discussing this. A nutritionist would appear and show healthy a cheap food that could be bought from the market at a fraction of the cost of a supermarket. She would be looked on as if she had just been beamed down from another planet. That was in the eighties. We haven’t moved on.

I think it is quite appalling that someone as fundamentally decent and socially aware as Ann should be forced to apologise for something that is true. But a difficult truth.

This has nothing to do with benefit policy, nothing to do with food banks and everything to do with common sense and education. It’s time we taught mums and dads how to cook.

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Will someone please explain to columnists like Peter Oborne that the Chancellor is actually a politician. And, shock horror, politicians make decisions to persuade the public to vote for them. There seems to be a sneering attitude towards George Osborne from the chattering classes this morning that his Autumn Statement was political. Well, of course it was. It shows a clear blue ocean between the Tories, Labour and to a certain extent some factions within the LibDems. The difference is stark and the message is clear. The Tories will give you as much as your hard earned money back as the economy can afford, encourage, growth and shrink the state whilst the other lot will tax and spend with the abandon of a drunk who has won the lottery.

You can almost smell the burning rubber of the columnist U turns. A few years ago George was an omnishambles Chancellor, cutting too fast and too deep with growth a fantasy and the country heading towards a double dip recession. ‘Where is plan B?’ they would scream. Now he is not cutting enough. He has ignored the mountain of debt. He is gambling with our future.

The truth is that Osborne has proved his critics hopelessly wrong. The man with the plan which was routinely rubbished has stuck the course, avoided the temporary political expedient of a U turn and now presides over an economic success story. But the wicked man is a politician. He realises that employment and growth figures mean very little to the public. They have seen their standard of living fall. They need to feel good about themselves. They want to share in the success that they read about but hasn’t trickled down to them yet. And that is what this Autumn Statement was all about, making people feel more secure in their jobs and persuading them if you work hard you will be rewarded. After all it’s not the government’s money, it’s come from the workers.

The real losers in this announcement is Labour and in particular the two Eds. Their mansion tax is an unworkable shambles. And they talk about reducing the deficit with the eloquence of Satan denouncing sin. Osborne the politician has out manoeuvred them on every flank. They can hardly moan about the NHS a being denied vital cash. They can’t scream that the stamp duty changes are unfair. And they can’t claim without crossing their fingers that the Tories are targeting the poor and the expense of their rich cronies. To build an election campaign on saving the NHS and on the cost of living is not so much a strategy as a cry for help. They might as well make Russell Brand Shadow Chancellor.

And where does this leave the KIPPERS? Time will tell. But when people feel better about their prospects and more secure they are less likely to look for scape goats. When lifestyles improve why take a risk with Labour and a white knuckled ride to oblivion with Farage at the controls.

No, you Fleet Street doomsayers we don’t want an economist for a Chancellor we want a politician.